One woman and her Dog
by Just Jamie
Summary: This story is set just after Season two of Doctor Who featuring references to the episodes School Reunion and Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, featuring Sarah Jane Smith and the new K9 mark 4.
1. Chapter 1

One woman and her dog.

"I'm bored. Can we do something?"

"Like what?"

"Well, we're here to investigate things, so, uhm, not to be too rude or anything, but can we not, like, investigate something?"

"You're mad! You've been in charge for all of two days, we're still trying to pick up all of the pieces from 'you know who's' last visit, and you want to go out looking for even more trouble?"

"Trouble is what I specialise in. That's why I got this job. Remember?"

"Hmmm, well, we do have something. Maybe."

"I'll take it. What is it?"

"We've got sketchy reports from our monitoring posts in South Yorkshire, of strange energy readings. Very mobile, and stable."

"So not natural then?"

"Doesn't look like it. We had been ordered to investigate, just before the shit hit the fan in London."

"Well, let's go then. I've been cooped up in here for far too long."

New Farnley. South Yorkshire

"Well, K9, that was a wasted journey."

"Mistress? Elaborate please?"

"I went all the way to New York, for the Security Council meeting; thanks to General Benton I had a front row seat for the "big announcement" and then, nothing. They cancel the meeting and the press conference. Damned inconsiderate of them."

"Matters of world importance would take precedence over the matter, would they not?"

"Well, yes, of course K9, but there's nothing going on. Is there?"

"My scans of world media would appear to concur with your theory, but sensors also indicated an electro magnetic pulse of sizeable magnitude whilst you were gone. Readings were consistent with a thermonuclear detonation, but the duration was much shorter than would be expected in such an event."

"And nobody in the media knows about it? That's strange, ever since the attack by the Cybermen, everyone's been watching out for anything even remotely 'alien'. Where was the E.M.P. located?"

"There was no specific locus for the event. It occurred over a large sparsely populated area in the African nation of Ethiopia. No reports of effects have been reported, no further sensor readings available, pulse was momentary in duration and residuals evaporated almost immediately. No further analysis available at this range. Closer examination of the affected area would be advisable."

"I'd love to help K9, but I can't exactly take you on as hand luggage on a scheduled flight to Ethiopia now can I?"

"Possible solution available."

"Yes?" Sarah Jane responded almost excited.

"General Benton. He has facilities as chief liaison to UNIT to enable my secretion aboard any military vessel."

"He'll be cross; I've been asking a lot of him lately."

"The Doctor/Master programmed me with all knowledge gleaned about UNIT personnel, including information about General Benton's affectations towards you mistress, this could be used to your advantage, could it not?"

"He's a married man. I couldn't flirt with his affections just to get a plane ride to Ethiopia. That would be cruel. Anyway, that's all in the past now. I'm sure he's very happy with his wife."

"No information on status of marital affairs of General Benton, but suggestion, try?"

"OK, you win, I'll call him. He might at least have more information on what's going on over there." Sarah Jane moved to the phone, "I'll try his office first." She picked up the phone, "That's odd; I'm not getting a dial tone. Must be another fault at the exchange."

Sarah Jane picked up her mobile phone and started to dial. "No signal? How bizarre"

K9 was in motion almost before Sarah Jane could register it. "Low level dampening field detected. Communication malfunctions are deliberate. Alert, Alert."

The front door of Sarah Jane's house suddenly flew back off its hinges. "Nobody move!" A male voice shouted as a figure clad all in black entered the dwelling, followed by two others, similarly dressed. All of them had guns, of some description, in their hands. The first crumpled under fire from K9.

"Cease hostile activity, I am programmed for defensive actions." K9 moved to position himself between Sarah and the intruders, who were still somewhat startled by the sudden felling of their comrade.

"Come, come gentlemen. Is this any way to treat a lady, and her fascinating little dog thing?" The almost dulcet tones came from a fourth individual who had stepped through the doorway. "Weapons down people," he said to the two remaining men dressed in black. "I hope you'll call off your dog miss."

"Instructions mistress?" K9 asked Sarah Jane.

"Okay, Power down your blaster K9, let's see if these 'gentlemen' can explain their actions." Sarah Jane could hear K9 complying with her instructions as the nozzle tip of his blaster withdrew.

"Thank you. K9 was it? Cute name. My name is Jack. I'm here representing the Torchwood institute."

"I knew it. I just knew it. You really do exist don't you?"

"Well, I exist, I've never denied that, my mother has, once or twice, but you need to know her to get her sense of humour."

"No, not you personally, I mean Torchwood as an organisation. I could never find anything concrete, but I knew you were out there." Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah could see K9's sensor pod extending from the area at the top of his head. His ears began to twirl; Sarah knew he was scanning the new arrivals.

"Oh, we exist alright. Protecting the British Empire from alien threats."

"Newsflash for you 'Jack' there is no British Empire any more."

"Y'know? I told them that, but they just told me to shut up. Weird huh?"

"Mistress, update available. This individual shows signs of chronal displacement. Temporal radiation readings are quite high. Also showing traces of Matrix contact in his cerebral cortex."

"In English K9!" Sarah Jane said, a little more than exasperated.

"This individual has travelled in a TARDIS, recently."

"What do you know about the TARDIS?" Jack was immediately on the defensive...

"Bio form readings correlate to individual known to the Doctor/Master. Instigating holo message."

A slot opened on K9's head, that Sarah Jane had never seen before and a small camera like device slid out of the alcove. An image appeared in front of K9, a ghostly image that Sarah recognised immediately, as the Doctor, the most recent one. The one who had recently visited Earth and gifted her the new K9 mark 4. The image spoke.

"Hello Captain. I thought you might pop back up somewhere, you've got a knack for survival that almost matches mine. I know you don't recognise me, but it's me. It's the Doctor. If you're seeing this, then you've found some anachronistic technology and decided to investigate, well, let me introduce you to that technology. This is K9, and this," The image turned to look straight at Sarah Jane, "Sarah Jane Smith, my Sarah Jane. Still getting into trouble I see." The figure smiled at her,

"Are you recording your message for Jack?" Sarah recognised Rose's voice immediately. Then her image pushed the Doctor's out of view. "Hey there Jack, good to, well, I can't actually see you, but you know, it's good to know that you got away from the Game Station in one piece maybe we'll see you for real, soon."

"Rose?" Jack asked, reaching out to the image, he knew he could never touch.

"Well, these people are friends of mine Jack. If they're in trouble, help them. Sarah Jane, K9, If Jack's in trouble, you help him. He's a nice guy once you get past the hyperactive libido."

The image faded away. "That wasn't the Doctor?" Jack asked.

"He regenerated." Sarah said simply, relaxing somewhat, now that she knew this man could, kind of, be trusted.

"We've got a lot to talk about." Jack replied simply.

"You got that right, especially about the cost of repairing my front door.

To be continued.


	2. Chapter 2

One woman and her Dog episode 2

"Your people really do work fast when they've made a mistake." Sarah said pointedly.

"Well, technically we didn't make a mistake. We were working well within our mandate. Finding anything remotely alien and taking it for the advancement and security of Great Britain."

"Yeah, but I can't believe you've got my front door replaced in under 20 minutes" Sarah replied, as she went to the kitchen to refill her coffee cup. "You want another?"

"No thanks. Coffee makes me hyperactive."

"From the Doctor's message, I don't think I want that." Sarah laughed lightly.

"So, K9" Jack whispered as Sarah left the room. "How are the Doctor and Rose doing?"

"Both the Doctor Master and Miss Tyler are, at last meeting fully functional, to the peak of their respective species faculties. Mr Smith was also functional."

"Who the hell is Mr Smith?"

"Mickey Smith, friend/colleague of Rose Tyler. At last meeting, travelling companion in Tardis."

"Mickey the idiot? In the Tardis? Wow. Leave them alone for a minute and they're taking any old stray on board. No offence pooch."

"No offence taken. Query? Pooch?"

At that Sarah returned from the Kitchen, "What were you two whispering about?"

"Oh, nothing much."

"Captain Harkness was querying the wellbeing of Doctor and Miss Tyler."

"Can't keep a secret can you pooch?" Jack asked in mock annoyance. K9 whimpered slightly.

"The three of them were fine when I last saw them." Sarah butted in. "I'm assuming they were responsible for dealing with the Cybermen as well."

"Did the Cybermen give you any problems?" Jack asked genuine concern on his face for this new ally.

"Nope. K9 took care of the lot of them. Didn't you K9?" Sarah stooped to rub K9 behind his ear.

"Affirmative. Cybernetic organisms required level 3 defensive level. Threat level was negligible."

"Negligible to you K9, but I felt under threat." Sarah Jane said as she sat down. "They seemed a lot more formidable this time around. Last time I met them, my jewellery box would have been enough to terrify them. You would never have thought that the big bad Cybermen were allergic to gold, once upon a time. Would you?" Sarah laughed, "Of course, there were far more of them this time."

"Yeah, on behalf of Torchwood. Sorry."

"What did Torchwood have to do with it?"

"Well, they were kind of, well, slightly responsible for it all. Fortunately it seems the Doctor arrived in the nick of time to stop it all. If he hadn't, the world would have been overrun by Daleks right now."

"No, it was Cybermen that attacked, not Daleks."

"Oh, I forgot, you weren't in London. There were a couple of million Daleks on the move as well. Seems they were having a fun old time playing kill the cyberman."

"Daleks and Cybermen? Killing each other? I suppose the winners would have gotten the prize. Our planet."

"That's the long and the short of it."

"When I saw the Cybermen flying off, obviously against their will, I just knew the Doctor had something to do with it though." Sarah laughed again.

"Yeah, it must have been a sight to behold. The Doctor hasn't been seen since though. I'm kinda worried about him."

"He'll be fine. So will Rose. The Doctor never lets anything happen to his travelling companions."

"Well, I did die, the last time I saw him."

"What? You died?"

"Yeah, the Daleks killed me. But then I woke up a few minutes later, and the Tardis was just leaving. I was stranded."

"Maybe you were just stunned." Sarah began.

"Daleks? Stunning people? I don't think they're even capable of that."

"No, you're probably right. I remember meeting Davros, their creator; he didn't seem like the kind of person that would build in a stun setting to a weapon."

"You met Davros? Wow, you really did get around with the Doctor, didn't you?"

"Quite a bit. Though that time we were sent to Skaro by the Timelords to wipe the Daleks out before they even got going."

"A pre emptive strike. Makes sense, they must have known the time wars were coming."

"The what? Time wars?"

"Yeah, three massive wars between the Daleks and the Timelords."

"I'm assuming the Timelords won them all."

"The first two were draws. The third one? Everybody lost. The Doctor most of all."

"Now what is that supposed to mean?"

"The Doctor destroyed the entire Dalek fleet, or at least he thought he did. But to do it, he had to destroy Gallifrey's main power source, the Eye of Harmony. It killed the Timelords, all of them."

"Oh my God. That's what he meant." Tears welled in Sarah Jane's eyes. "I can't believe I told him off for dumping me on Earth when he was called back to Gallifrey. He said, everybody else died." Sarah Jane fell silent.

"He did what he thought he needed to do, for the sake of the entire Universe." Jack knew his words wouldn't help Sarah Jane's de facto grief for the Doctor's loss, and empathy for the pain that her dear friend must have felt, every day since it happened.

"Apologies Mistress. New information available. Further EMP readings detected from area in Ethiopia. Field is expanding, and increasing in intensity. All local communications and electrical apparatus is now non responsive. A Global SOS was despatched as the field intensity began to grow. Message intercepted."

Both Jack and Sarah Jane now had their focus directed to K9. "What was the message?"

"Playback commencing." K9 replied.

A new voice came from K9, crackling as though it were a radio, slightly out of tune. "Help us. They are everywhere. Our military forces are ineffective against them. Their armour, it's impenetrable. Help us, please……." The message broke off.

"Who else received that K9?" Jack asked.

"Unknown, signal was very weak. Had my transceiver array not been directed towards the area in question, I may not have received the message. It is therefore possible that we are the only recipients of the message."

"We have to do something. Have your boys repaired my phone line yet?" Sarah Jane jumped to her feet, snatching the phone from its cradle, a dial tone greeted her ears. She dialled the number and waited patiently for an answer. "When the phone was picked up she immediately spoke, "General Benton please. No, I need to speak to him now. It's a matter of international security." She stopped momentarily, hearing something, that Jack could tell from her face, she didn't want to hear.

"Listen up, you jumped up secretary. I want to speak to General Benton, NOW. Tell him it's a U.N.I.T level 10 threat, code red 13."

The voice on the other end of the phone immediately stopped it's protestations, Sarah heard a click on the line as her call was transferred.

Another voice spoke, "Benton speaking. Who is this, and if this is some kind of joke, we already have a location for your call, and we will track you down."

"Oh stop threatening me Steven. It's Sarah Jane."

"Sarah? It's good to hear from you again, but you know you didn't have to declare a planetary invasion alert to get through to me" Benton laughed.

"I wasn't joking. K9 detected a massive EMP in an area of Ethiopia, it's now expanded and grown in intensity, he picked up a distress call from their Government, we don't know yet if anyone else received it. Someone, or something, is attacking them."

"I'm sending a car for you. I'm going to call all UNIT offices in Africa to get more information, can you ask K9 to keep monitoring the situation?"

"You don't need to ask, he already is. Thanks Steven. This is big." Sarah hung up and saw Jack with a mobile phone in his hand.

"Doesn't hurt to have extra back up. All available Torchwood personnel are on high alert now. We've got intelligence Gathering equipment like you wouldn't believe."

"The more the merrier." Sarah Jane replied, with all of the enthusiasm that her fear would allow…

To be continued…


End file.
